St Luke's Hospital was founded in 1750 to treat mental illness among the poor of London.

The hospital was founded as St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics by City of London philanthropists with the intention of curing 'lunacy' and making treatment accessible to poorer people. The first patients were admitted in July 1751 to the converted Moorfields Foundry site. In 1786 it moved to a purpose-built site on Old Street, where it remained until 1916. From 1841 the hospital came under the London Commissioners in Lunacy, but by 1865 it was taking mainly middle class patients.

The hospital was closed until 1922, when the St Luke’s charity set up a ward within the Middlesex Hospital. In 1930 a third incarnation of the hospital - Woodside Nerve Hospital opened in Muswell Hill. This was renamed the Saint Luke's Woodside Hospital in 1948 and became the psychological department of Middlesex Hospital.

Explore the St Luke's Hospital papers

The digitised St Luke's Hospital papers are available under a Creative Commons NonCommercial Attribution license. They can be downloaded and reused for non-commercial purposes only, so long as attribution is given to London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.